Overview

"This book follows the adventures of anthropoligst Florinda Donner as she experiences, firsthand, the wild mystery and slow destruction of an indigenous tribe in the endangered rainforest. Her rich images of daily life as she lives with the Yanomama in their shabonos, or palm-thatched dwellings, and the magic of ritual in this native village portray a world threatened by extinction. Florinda Donner is the author of ""Being in Dreaming"" and ""The Witch's Dream""."

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9780062502421

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Reviews

A small, blonde, blue-eyed anthropologist treks the jungle fastness between Brazil and Venezuela, guided by a dying old woman and her son: Iticoteri Indians of ferocious acclaim. Mother dies en route to the shabono, the settlement of palm-thatched huts of her people. What follows is the story of a short stay that grew into a year - in which our heroine adopts native ways and mutual affection blossoms. Is this not the stuff of Hollywood's innocent days? It is indeed. Yet it happened; and Donner's account is convincing in its detail and character descriptions, and above all in her ability to convey the emotional transformations that turned her from a note-taking anthropologist into a participant - painted from head to toe with bright red lines and circles, weeding the gardens with the other women, sleeping in a bark hammock. Her primary interest had been native curing practices, and she is a keen observer of shaman rites. The Iticoteri believed that she had been sent to bring the old woman home, and that (exceptional for women) she possessed hekuras - spirits that shamans lure to their chests after taking hallucinogenic snuff. This privileged status enabled her to learn more of native lore - but also led to a seduction on her way back to the Catholic mission. (Not told as titillation but revelation.) An occasional florid passage might have been excised, and some adjectives might have been pruned; but since everything Donner describes is rare - food, language, landscape, people - hyperbole is hard to resist. And, as Donner convincingly gives the lie to the myth of primitive savages, the Iticoteri themselves are hard to resist. For unjaded non-cynics: a winner. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Florinda Donner, the longtime colleague and fellow dream-traveler of Carlos Castaneda, offers a riveting autobiographical account of her halting, sometimes unwilling, often bewildering initiation into the world of being-in-dreaming. At turns spellbinding, mysterious, and humorous, Being-In-Dreaming is ultimately an unforgettable spiritual adventure. She is also the author of Shabano and The Witch's Dream.

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